Functionalized polymer substrates are finding use in various chemical and biological applications. In particular, polymer coatings on surfaces and polymer beads can be used in various separation techniques or to assist with detecting analytes in both chemical and biological systems. For example, polymeric particles have been used in chromatographic techniques to separate target molecules from a solution. In another example, polymeric particles having a magnetic coating are utilized in magnetic separation techniques. More recently, polymeric particles have been used to enhance ELISA-type techniques and can be used to capture polynucleotides.
Such separation and analytical techniques depend on functionalizing the polymer substrate to attract the desired analyte. Previous substrates have suffered from poor surface functionalization or difficulty in controlling the number of functionalized sites. Poor functionalization can lead to a reduction in analyte capture or expression of captured analytes, either through a lack of sites, poor access to sites, or other steric hindrances. For magnetic separations techniques, variance in analyte capture can lead to low efficiency separations. For chromatographic techniques and various polynucleotide capture techniques, variance in functionalization can lead to variance in the number of sites available for interacting with polynucleotides, leading to variance in capture or separation efficiency or detection.